Further seems to cover everything else:

• Thoughts of leaving are furthest from my mind.
• Let’s discuss this further.
• The farther we go into the desert, the hotter it gets.
• I am farther away from the store than you are.
• I am further from realizing my goals than I was last year.
• Stop before you go any further on that topic.

If you’re dealing with a sentence that seems a bit ambiguous, you really can use either word. People regularly use either word for physical distance and it’s become acceptable. But to be safe, default to further, and you’ll probably be fine. No need to fret further on the subject.

“After George drug Ralph through the mud, he sunk into his easy chair and watched TV.”

“The sun shined on the water after the sun had rose.”

“I sung a song after I swum across the lake, then I drunk a bottle of beer.”

Okay, I hope you saw some problems in these sentences. If you didn’t, that’s okay. That’s why you’re reading this blog post—to improve your grammar, right? So, don’t feel bad—you’re not alone. I’m not sure that we conjugate so many verbs incorrectly because this is how we’ve learned to talk, but whatever the reason, we need to use the correct conjugation of a verb in our writing.

If you want to get technical, what is happening is writers are using the past participle form (usually with had, as in “I had swum”) with the past indicative (the” regular old” past tense, as in “I swam.”) So here are the three correct forms of some verbs you may sometimes get confused (present, past, and past participle forms):

• Swim, swam, swum
• Shine, shined, shined (if you are shining shoes or some object)
• Shine, shone, shone (if an object is shining on its own, such as the sun)
• Rise, rose, risen (the sun had risen at six a.m.)
• Raise, raised, raised (as in lifting your arm)
• forbid, forbade, forbidden
• Get, got, gotten
• Bear, bore, borne (carry)
• Bare, bared, bared (reveal)
• Drink, drank, drunk
• Hang, hanged, hanged (as in swinging from the gallows)
• Hang, hung, hung (to suspend)
• Shake, shook, shaken

And it’s drag, dragged, dragged—no, not drugged. That involves chemicals. Which makes me think of last week’s post and the misuse of lie and lay. ”I lied on the bed after they drugged me there.” Some writers intend for this to mean they were reclining on the bed after someone pulled them along the floor. But I’m sure you see how this really means something entirely different (more like an abduction scene from a spy thriller, right?).

• I lied on the couch for six hours (wow, your voice must have gone hoarse talking for so long!).
• I layed down when I got tired.
• The chicken layed an egg.

Really, there are only six words you need to remember. If you recite them a bunch of times, you might just be able to recall them when you need them. And two of them repeat, so you really only need to know four words. How hard is that? Here they are:

• Lie, lay, lain
• Lay, laid, laid

If you’re not sure when to use lie, think of recline (Hear the long i sound in both words). Lie (not the verb discussing whether you are telling the truth or not) is something you do to yourself—you lie down. I lie down today. I lay down yesterday. I had lain down every day for a week.

Lay is something you do to something else (in grammar-talk this verb takes a direct object. Lie never does). When you think of lay, think of place (Hear the long a sound in both words). I lay the book on the table. I laid the book on the table. I had laid the book on the table every day this week.

So just repeat after me: “Lie, lay, lain. Lay, laid, laid . . .”

I think I need to go lie down now.

Here are a few more confusables for your consideration:

• permissible (allowable)/permissive (giving permission)
• slight (scant or many other various meanings)/sleight (only used with the expression “sleight of hand”–adeptness in a magic trick or some other deception)
• imply (express indirectly)/infer (deduce)
• blond (adjective to describe the hair color)/blonde (only used as a noun for a female with blond hair.)
• elude (avoid or evade)/allude (refer to, as in “he alluded to my story”)
• imminent (impending)/eminent (distinguished)/immanent (inherent or indwelling)

There is a slight difference, also, between infamous and notorious. Both mean “well-known for some disreputable or wicked quality, deed, or event,” but notorious emphasizes the “well-known” aspect and is often misused to just apply to famous (not infamous) individuals or events. Infamous emphasizes the wickedness aspect, and the person doesn’t have to be well-known. You can have infamous behavior and be a nobody. And if you want to delve into another amigo word-explanation, the bit on the meaning of plethora between El Guapo and his sidekick is too funny. Trust me and just watch the movie.

Here are some phrases that can be reduced to a simpler expression:

• a large portion of (many)
• are in possession of (have)
• at this point in time (now)
• in spite of the fact that (although)
• in the not-too-distant future (soon)
• in the vicinity of (near)
• put in an appearance (appear)
• take into consideration (consider)
• made a statement saying (said, stated)

Think about reading through your manuscript with the idea of boiling down wordy phrases into the simplest form–like you did in that chemistry class in school ( and hopefully didn’t burn the Bunsen burner). You may find that a goodly number of words (many) are far and beyond (more) than you absolutely must without fail have (need). Happy writing!

• adequate enough
• paramount importance
• past history (unless you’re into sci-fi or some branch of quantum mechanics and want to distinguish from future history)
• plan in advance
• serious danger (funny to me)
• total annihilation
• trained professional
• want in advance
• joint cooperation
• final outcome
• eliminate altogether

Can you think of some? Maybe if we become aware of these we can get rid of some of these unnecessary habitual customs.

• the Fertile Crescent
• the Gaza Strip
• the Gulf
• the Holy City
• the Jewish Quarter
• the Lake District
• the Left Bank
• the Loop (Chicago)
• the Old World
• the Panhandle
• the Promised Land
• Silicon Valley
• Skid Row

Names of mountains, rivers, oceans, islands, and so forth are capitalized. The generic term (mountain, etc.) is also capitalized when used as part of the name.

• the Bering Strait
• the Mediterranean Sea; the Mediterranean
• the Pacific Ocean; the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans
• the Great Barrier Reef
• the Hawaiian Islands; Hawaii; but the island of Hawaii
• Mount Washington; Mount Rainier; Mounts Washington and Rainier
• the Rocky Mountains; the Rockies
• Death Valley; the Valley of Kings
• the Continental Divide

The best and simplest way to generalize capitalization rules is to consider whether what you are writing is a proper name or something more general. Proper names should have initial caps. General terms do not. That’s not always the case, but when in doubt, default to that principle.

• the Great Plains; the northern plains; the plains (but Plains Indians)
• the Midwest, midwestern, a midwesterner (as of the United States)
• the North, northern, a northerner (of a country); the North, Northern, Northerner (in American Civil War contexts); Northern California; North Africa, North African countries, in northern Africa; North America, North American, the North American continent; the North Atlantic, a northern Atlantic route; the Northern Hemisphere; the Far North; north, northern, northward, to the north (directions)
• the Northeast, the Northwest, northwestern, northeastern, a northwesterner, a northeasterner (as of the United States); the Pacific Northwest; the Northwest Passage
• the poles; the North Pole; the North Polar ice cap; the South Pole; polar regions (see also Antarctica; the Arctic)
• the South, southern, a southerner (of a country); the South, Southern, a Southerner (in American Civil War contexts); the Deep South; Southern California; the South of France (region); Southeast Asia; South Africa, South African (referring to the Republic of South Africa); southern Africa (referring to the southern part of the continent); south, southern, southward, to the south (directions)
• the Southeast, the Southwest, southeastern, southwestern, a southeasterner, a southwesterner (as of the United States)

As I’ve mentioned before, the tendency is to lowercase unless the name or phrase is referring to something akin to a proper name or title. But when it comes to specific regions of the world, some are considered “worthy” of capitalization while others aren’t. We in California were happy to see Chicago add Northern California to its list of worthies in the 16th edition. Why it wasn’t seen on the same level as Southern California all these years, I guess we may never know. And I hope you noticed the absence of hyphens in those compound terms, like southwesterner. Even my WordPress spell-check gives me every possible option except the correct one (which should give you a clue as to how correct those spell-checkers are)!

Student status:

•  freshman or first-year student
• sophomore
• junior
• senior

Academic degrees:

• a master’s degree
• a doctorate; a fellowship
• master of business administration (MBA)

Ethnic groups (common designations) unless a particular publisher or author prefers otherwise:

•  black people; blacks; people of color
• white people; whites

Terms denoting socioeconomic classes:

•  the middle class; a middle-class neighborhood
• the upper-middle class; an upper-middle-class family
• blue-collar workers
• the aristocracy
• the proletariat
• homeless people

Terms denoting generations:

• the me generation
• baby boomer(s)
• generation X; generation Y; generation Z
• the MTV generation

Note that when referring to an academic department, you do use initial caps, but do not capitalize the: I went to the Department of Natural History yesterday to speak to the dean.